Top 10 Linux Video Applications – NOT! 05/21/09

I recently read a Digg post “10 Free Apps that Turn your Ubuntu into a Video Studio” and it annoyed the heck out of me! Maybe I’m being too critical, but I don’t see 10 top video applications in Linux (I’m an Ubuntu user). In fact, I don’t even see ten productive, functional, Linux based video applications that I would use in a production environment. Maybe I’m a bit too outspoken, but in my opinion, the article that Digg post points to is not worth the pixels it’s displayed with. Based on the numerous comments from diggers, I’d have to agree that they rightfully consider that post lame. Okay… Personal opinion rant over.

Criticism aside, I just wrote a couple posts about turning your Linux (Ubuntu) computer into a multimedia system, which touched on the topic of videos:

While the focus of the above posts leaned more towards playback and web development, I did mention at least a couple video applications. In my opinion the state of video application development in Ubuntu Linux – For that matter all Linux distributions has a long way to go. In most of the current video application, I’ve found that the functionality is lacking, or that the user interface (UI) is so complicated that it makes the application a labour to use. I’m more familiar with applications such as Adobe After Effects which is Mac and Windows based (where are the Linux versions of your products Adobe? ) and I use it in a production environment. Additionally smaller “quickie” applications such as “MPEG_Stream Clip” or quickie video converters are not available in Linux with the same ease of use and functionality.

I appreciate that some may argue that After Effects is complicated. In the beginning, when learning, it is. But after you’ve been using it for a few years, it’s not as complicated. In all honesty, I use applications (such as After Effects) as my guideline to compare. There are so few available, and in my opinion, not one of the truly provides an adequate, complete production grade video application.

Video Conversion:

I operate several video streaming sites. These are sites with similar functionality to Youtube. They allow users (my clients) to upload their videos and the videos are converted by the server to flv files for streaming across the web. To accomplish this, I install various codecs and other tools on the server, most importantly ffmpeg.

ffmpeg means “Fast Forward MPEG”. It’s a command line application that is built and uses open source libraries and software. It also uses the installed video (and audio) codecs, mux/demux library, etc. to convert video’s from one format to another. As such, I’d highly recommend installing this in a Linux PC, if you’re using that box for video work.

Convert it to the wmv2 video codec (“-vcodec”) and the wmv2 audio codec (“-acodec”),

Use the same quality as the original video file (“-sameq”),

Force the converted (output) file to asf (“-f asf”),

Name that converted file “testvideo.asf”

The MAN page for ffmpeg allows you a more detailed explanation of the switches and other that are available for use.

I did a search on Youtube and found a great ffmpeg video (below):

Video Applications:

AvideMux is okay for cutting existing videos, stripping audio or video, capturing video, etc. It does not provide the functionality that some of us are familiar with in applications such as After Effects or Final Cut Pro. More information can be found on the Avidemux wiki-documentation site.

Cinelerra-CV is (the UI) closer to what we’d expect in a video production application.The functionality is much closer to those of the professional production environments, but in my opinion, it still needs work. I’ve tried Cinelerra three times now, and I don’t use it. Why?:

It’s a pain in the rear to get installed and working properly (at least it was for me).

The interface, while it does have better functionality, is still horrid (VERY ugly and not intuitive) to try and work with (which takes more time).

When I last tried it, Cinelerra used the “floating windows” interface (like GIMP does), which was horrible to work with (as there was no locked parent window).

However, it may work well for your environment (they way you work), so you should give it a try. To install it via aptitude, you’d need to add the appropriate repositories to your sources.list. For installing on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) – The following is directly (Copy & Paste) from their site:

For all x86 (full working on 32 and 64 bits), by Paolo Rampino:deb http://akirad.cinelerra.org akirad-hardy main

Installation notes:

For your convenience you can install a package for detecting your version of Ubuntu, installing akirad repository and keeping it updated.

Just double click on the link http://akirad.cinelerra.org/pool/addakirad.deb and install it with GDebi Package Installer.

Kino, I use more for video capture than anything else. I wouldn’t really call it a video production application. It can export different formats and has some effects. You can stich video files together. You can use it to render a dv file as well as a few other features.

I think Kino is great for putting together a medley of clips with nice transition effects between them. Check out the how to video below:

The above video is using Kino in a KDE environment.

KDEnlive, I think is another great potential (I’ve not used it as I’m in a Gnome environment). Don’t get me wrong, if you’re also using Gnome, you can still try KDEnlive as all the KDE dependencies will be installed – And quite frankly, if you’re going to do that, it may be better to simple use KDE (such as Kubuntu). If you already have tools like ffmpeg installed, this one can be a bit tricky to install. Either way, here a preview video below that shows some of the features:

Realistically, the state of video development (at least on our Linux desktops) is still in its infancy. We’ve got a long way to go before we have an open source application that rivals the likes of Final Cut or After Effects. For those interested in experimenting further, one promising distribution is worth looking at: Ubuntu Studio. From their site:

“…is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. We provide a suite of the best open-source applications available for multimedia creation. Completely free to use, modify and redistribute. Your only limitation is your imagination…”

I certainly hope that this multimedia type distro can spearhead and pave the way to better video editing applications in Linux. I’d love to write a post about the Top 10 Video Applications, but right now we don’t really have 10.

Feel free to include any video applications or solutions you use, in the comments.

@GregE – Thanks for the great input! For those who have not heard of Open Movie Editor (I had not), here’s a link to the download. It looks like it’s going to be cross platform (which I think is smashing). Thanks too for the input on KDEnlive – Perhaps I should give it a go then as well.
Cheers!